Suicide Notes

for Jeff, I thought as I shut the door behind me.
When I got back to the lounge, the new girl, Martha, was there. She was
sitting on the couch, still holding that rabbit in her lap. She was staring out
the window at the snow.
I was going to go back to my room, but something made me go over to
Martha. She didn’t even look at me when I sat down next to her. I kind of
wanted to say hello to her. I mean, I know it’s not easy your first few days
in the nuthouse.
“I like your rabbit,” I said.
Martha stopped rubbing the rabbit’s ears and looked at me.

---

“Does he have a name?”
She nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“He’s your best friend, isn’t he?” I said, and she nodded again.
“I have a best friend, too,” I told her. “Her name is Allie, and I tell her
everything. Do you tell your bunny everything?”
Martha nodded and held the bunny close to her, like she was protecting
him.
“I bet he’s a good listener,” I said. Then I told her, “You don’t have to
say anything if you don’t want to. We can just sit here together.”
She buried her face in her rabbit’s fur, but I could see she was smiling.
We sat like that for about an hour. I talked about some stuff, nothing
important, and she sat there and listened. It didn’t matter that she didn’t say
anything. I think she was happy just having company. I guess having a
stuffed bunny for your only friend can get a little lonely.

---

Day 14
My bandages came off today. I didn’t know they were coming off, so it was
a little bit of a shock when Goody Two-shoes called me into the medical
room after breakfast and pulled out her scissors. And it was even more of a
shock when she unwrapped the gauze and I saw the stitches. I don’t know
what I thought would be there—maybe some tape or something—but there
were little black crisscrosses along my wrists, like tiny railroad tracks. Or
animal prints. It looked like a mouse had run across my arm with muddy
feet.
The stitches came out, too. That hurt a little, because the skin had healed
around them. But Goody’s a whiz with her scissors and tweezers, and she
got them out pretty quickly. Now I just have these reddish scars there. I
guess I always will, although Goody says they’ll fade over time.
I don’t know if I want them to fade. That probably sounds totally freaky,
but part of me doesn’t want to forget what it felt like, even though it hurt. If
I forget about the pain, I might also forget that it was a really stupid idea to
do it in the first place.
My mother told me once that having babies is like that. I guess she was
in labor for something like sixteen hours when she had me. Also, it was the
middle of July, and being super fat in the hottest part of the year wasn’t her
idea of fun. All in all, she said, it wasn’t as beautiful an experience as they
make you think having a baby is, and afterward she told my dad she would
never do it again.
But she apparently forgot how much it hurt, because two years later she
had my sister. Although that time she planned it so she’d be her fattest in
the winter, when she could wear a bunch of clothes to cover it and she
wouldn’t mind being warm all the time. And she had them load her up on
painkillers the minute she started having contractions. Amanda only took,
like, two hours to pop out, anyway, a fact my mother reminds me of
whenever she wants to make me feel guilty. Then I remind her that nobody
told her to go and get pregnant.

---

Not that I’m really comparing having kids to trying to kill yourself. I’m
just saying that sometimes forgetting how much things hurt makes you do
them again. And that’s not always such a hot idea.
I’m not even sure I want kids, by the way, even if I’m not the one who
has to be pregnant. It seems too risky. I mean, what if you end up with a kid
that’s just plain bad? Or stupid? It’s not like you can give it away or put it in
a garage sale or something. You’re pretty much stuck with it for a long
time.
I know now they have all these tests they can do so you can find out if
your kid has three arms or is retarded or whatever, but you can’t test for
everything. You can’t test for crazy, for example, or for bad taste in music
and clothes and stuff. You can’t know if your kid is going to be someone
you would actually want to have hanging around. You just have to take your
chances. That seems like a pretty big gamble to me.
Not that I’d be having any kids right away, anyway. I’m only fifteen. I
know, there are a lot of fifteen-year-olds out there having babies, but not
me. I don’t need to mess up my life any more than it already is. So no
babies for me. I’m glad we got that straightened out.
I don’t know how I got from my stitches to babies. Sometimes my mind
goes in weird directions. Or maybe it’s the meds, which I’m still on. But
Cat Poop says these are just antidepressants, and nothing too heavy-duty.
Not like the Pez.
Anyway, after I got my stitches out, I went to show Sadie. I know I kind
of freaked out the other day when she mentioned them, but the truth is,
she’s really the only person who hasn’t treated them like they’re a big deal,
and that’s sort of cool.
She asked if she could touch my scars, and I said it was okay. She ran
her fingers over them like they were puppies, really softly, like she was
afraid she might open them up again.
“I don’t have any scars,” she said, and she sounded kind of sad.
“Do you remember almost drowning?” I asked her. It’s something I’d
been wondering for a while, but I wasn’t sure it was something I should ask.
Now, since she was touching my scars and all, well, I figured it was as good
a time as any.
“I remember everything was green and quiet,” she said. “At first—when
the air ran out—my chest burned. But then the pain went away, and

---

everything was really quiet. I felt like I was flying. The next thing I
remember is lying on the grass. Sam was breathing into my mouth and all
these people were staring at me.”
I asked her who Sam was, and she said he was the guy who’d saved her.
He’d seen her jump into the lake with all her clothes on, and he’d thought it
was a little weird. When she went under and didn’t come up, he jumped in
and pulled her out again.
“He’s called a couple of times,” Sadie told me. “You know, to see how I
am.”
After that I had to go see old Cat Poop. The first thing I noticed was that
something about him looked different. “You got a haircut,” I said once I
realized what it was.
“Yes,” he said.
I wanted him to say that I’d been right about his needing to deal with his
hair, but instead he launched right into therapy time. He reminded me that
my parents were coming tomorrow for their weekly visit. Then he asked me
how I was getting along with the other kids. I told him I was getting along
fine, and he seemed happy with that.
I thought things were going too easily. Then Cat Poop said, “I see your
bandages are off.”
Like he didn’t know. I’m pretty sure Goody would never have removed
them without his permission. I looked down and said, “I guess they are,”
like until then I hadn’t even noticed. “How about that?”
“How do you feel about seeing the cuts?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “I guess it means my career as a hand model is over,” I said.
“That might take some getting used to.”
The doc looked at my face for a long time, so I said, “Seriously, it
doesn’t bother me. They’re just cuts.”
I think he was trying to figure out how big of a lie I was telling. The
thing is, I wasn’t telling one at all. Seeing the cuts really doesn’t bother me.
Honestly, it’s better than having your wrists wrapped up like a mummy.
Besides, as long as I wear long sleeves forever, I’ll hardly ever see them.
“All right,” Cat Poop said, but I don’t think he was totally convinced.
“Then that’s it for today.”
All in all, it was a pretty good day. For one thing, I got Cat Poop to cut
his hair, which I think is a totally huge achievement. Plus, I got my

---

bandages off and didn’t freak out about it. I think I can honestly say that for
the first time since I got here, I’m feeling more or less okay.

---

Day 15
So my parents came again today. This time things went much better. At
least I think they did. The only weird thing was that my mother kept staring
at my wrists. Somehow I’d forgotten about the scars already and I wore a T-
shirt. I tried to cross my arms and tuck my hands in, but I was afraid they’d
think I was being hostile, so instead I just clasped my hands together and
tried to keep the scar sides in. Still, she kept looking down there.
Cat Poop started off the session by asking my parents each to name one
thing about me that they were proud of. You can imagine how excited I was
about that, but actually it wasn’t too cringe-inducing. My father said that
he’s always been proud of the fact that I do well in school, which is a pretty
dad thing to say, very neutral and not too touchy-feely. My mom said she
was proud of everything I did. Cat Poop asked her to be more specific,
which made me want to laugh (but I didn’t), and she said she guessed she
was most proud of the fact that I was a good person.
I’m not sure what a good person is, exactly. On the one hand, it could be
someone who always plays by the rules. But someone can follow the rules
and still be a real jerk, you know? In fact, some of the biggest idiots I know
are people who follow the rules, usually because they make you feel like
crap when you don’t.
Or maybe a good person is someone who’s always doing good things
for other people. That sure isn’t me. I’d probably get kicked out of Boy
Scouts if I was in it because I wouldn’t help old ladies across the street, if
you get my drift. Not that I’m a jerk or anything; it’s just that other people
aren’t always my main priority in life.
I kind of wish Cat Poop had asked my mom to be even more specific,
but I think he thought she’d done the best she could. Instead, he asked me to
tell my parents two things about them that I was thankful for. I thought it
was a little unfair making me say two things when they’d had to come up
with just one each, but I gave it a shot.
First I said I was thankful that they always made sure I had everything I
needed, like clothes and food and a house. Second, I said I was thankful that

---

they never made me feel bad about myself. I was thinking about Sadie
when I said that, about how her dad always made her feel like she was a
problem. I also thought about Alice and her mother’s boyfriend. I still have
a hard time believing that any mom would let that happen to her kid, even
though you read about it in the paper and see it on the news all the time.
Until I met Alice, I always assumed it happened to “other” people, as in
people I didn’t know. I guess there are a lot more other people than I
thought there were.
After we talked a little more, they said they had a surprise for me.
Amanda was with them. Cat Poop wanted to talk to my parents some more,
so he told me to go into the room next to his office, which it turns out is
almost exactly like his office except there’s no picture of a dog carrying a
dead bird. I guess it’s for another shrink, although it looked like no one had
used it in a long time.
Amanda was waiting there. When I came in she jumped up and gave me
a big hug.
“Watch it,” I told her. “First mom, and now you. This hugging stuff is
starting to scare me.”
“You jerk,” she said, but not in an angry way. “You scared me. Don’t
ever do that again.”
I still wasn’t sure how much she knew about why I was in the hospital,
so I was a little nervous. Again, I tried to hide my wrists by sticking my
hands in the pockets of my jeans.
“It’s okay,” Amanda said. “They told me. Besides, it’s not like you
could hide the bloodstains on the carpet. There was a lot of it.”
“They let you see it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I snuck in. At first they tried to tell me you sliced
yourself opening a CD with a box cutter.”
She rolled her eyes, and I laughed. That’s totally something my parents
would do. I could just see Amanda demanding to know the real story.
“Are you really okay?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m fine.”
She gave me a look like she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t say
anything. I knew she wanted to believe that everything’s all right, and even
though she probably had a million other questions, she didn’t ask any of
them then.

---

Then I noticed her hair.
“I dyed it,” Amanda said.
“No kidding,” I said.
Had she ever. Her hair is naturally this kind of blondish red, just like my
dad’s. Now it was a lot more red. In fact, it was really red. Like a cherry
Popsicle.
“Relax,” she said when I didn’t say anything for a minute. “It’s just
Kool-Aid. But don’t tell Mom. She thinks it’s permanent.”
I laughed. It felt good. I hadn’t had a real laugh since I woke up in the
hospital. “I won’t,” I promised. “Why are you torturing her this time?”
Amanda shook her head. “No reason,” she said. “It’s just fun.”
That’s what I love about my sister. She does things just because she
wants to. I know you’re not supposed to think your little sister is cool, but
by now I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t exactly do things by the book.
Amanda sat down on the couch, and I sat in a chair across from her.
“What’s the word around school?” I asked her. My heart raced a little as I
waited for her to answer. I don’t really care what people think about me
most of the time, but disappearing and ending up in the hospital are a little
more serious than breaking out in zits or wearing the wrong sneakers.
“That depends who you ask,” said Amanda. “The popular theory is
mono, although I’ve also heard that you have cancer, hepatitis, and maybe a
brain tumor. Oh, and for about a day and a half you’d run away because
mom and dad caught you doing drugs.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Does anyone know the real reason?”
“If they do, they didn’t hear it from me,” she told me. “I’m sticking with
mono.”
Then I asked her the one question I was really interested in hearing the
answer to. “Have you seen Allie around?”
“Yeah,” Amanda said. But there was something in her voice that
sounded weird, as if she really didn’t want to talk about it. So of course I
made her.
It turns out Amanda saw Allie at lunch about a week after I came to the
hospital. She thought Allie would want to know that I was okay, even if she
couldn’t tell her exactly what had happened, so she went over to her and
started talking.

---

“But all she did was kind of nod,” Amanda said. “She was sitting with
this guy, and it was like she didn’t really want to talk to me.”
I told Amanda that we’d had a fight about something, but that it wasn’t
a big deal and Allie would get over it. I know Amanda didn’t buy it, but for
once she let it go. Like I said, she’s pretty cool. Not that I’d ever let her
know that. I have to keep her in line somehow or she’ll think she’s the boss
of everything.
“Anyway, you’ve got to get out of here soon,” said Amanda. “They’re
driving me nuts.”
I knew she meant my mother and father. I could just imagine what they
were like to live with now. I’m surprised they hadn’t installed security
cameras in Amanda’s room. And now her Kool-Aid hair made even more
sense. Knowing Amanda, she’d done it just to make them worry.
“Sorry about that,” I said. And I really was. I mean, it’s not Amanda’s
fault that I’m in here.
“I can handle it,” she assured me.
We just sat there for a minute, like we’d run out of things to say. But it
wasn’t awkward or weird. It was kind of nice. Amanda was treating me the
way she always does, not like I’d done something crazy. Then Cat Poop
opened the door and my parents came in. I don’t know what he said to
them, but they were all smiling again, like circus clowns. I wanted to hand
them some balloons.
“We’ll see you next week,” my mother said. She looked like she was
going to hug me again, but I moved so that Cat Poop was between us and
just said, “Okay. See you then.”
No one else tried to hug me, although I know Amanda would have if my
parents hadn’t been there, and that would have been okay. They all said
good-bye and left. I’m sure they were as happy to get out as I would have
been if I was leaving with them.
It made me think of Mrs. Christensen. Mrs. Christensen is about
seventeen million years old. She’s a friend of my grandmother’s, and she
lives in a home now because her entire family is dead. Every Christmas we
have to go visit her. We take her a fruitcake and some presents, like slippers
and chocolate and whatever. We spend about an hour with her, and it’s the
longest hour in the history of time. The home smells like old people, and
even though they put up all of these decorations, it’s still depressing. Mrs.

---

Christensen always acts like we’re her real family, but we aren’t, and I can’t
wait to get out of there.
I bet that’s how my parents and Amanda feel. I know I would if one of
them was in here. I’d just want to get it over with and leave the fruitcake.

---

Day 16
Before my parents left yesterday they gave me a care package from my
grandmother. Actually, they left it with Cat Poop, and he gave it to me
today. They probably had to run it by the drug-sniffing dogs or something to
make sure there was nothing in it I’m not supposed to have. Like my
grandma would have stuck packets of heroin in there. Or porn.
Anyway, she sent me chocolate chip cookies, some peanut butter fudge,
and a dollar. She always puts a dollar in when she sends me or my sister
something—cards, letters, whatever. It must be an old lady thing to do. My
dad says she always gave him and his brother a dollar when she wrote to
them, too, until they had kids of their own. Now she sends us the dollars. I
guess she figures my dad doesn’t need them.
I shared the cookies and fudge with everyone else, but only because I
knew that otherwise I’d just eat it all and then feel sick. Besides, we had
movie night tonight. They let us watch a DVD of a movie about this guy
who spent every summer living with grizzly bears in Alaska. It’s a true
story. Every year he hiked into the wilderness and followed the bears
around until fall came and they went into hibernation. Until one year when
a bear ate him.
You’d think it would be all sad, someone being eaten by a bear. The
thing is, though, this guy really loved those bears. He loved everything
about them, even when they did stuff that looked totally mean, like fight
over food or kill a rival bear’s cubs. It was like they were his family, and he
forgave them for their bear behavior because he knew they couldn’t help it.
I think he probably even would have forgiven the bear that ate him.
They interviewed a lot of people in the movie, and most of them said
they just couldn’t understand why this guy would want to spend so much
time with bears. Some of them thought he believed he was a bear because
he couldn’t handle who he really was. I think they’re wrong. I think he just
loved being with the bears because they didn’t make him feel bad.
I mean, sure, this guy was a little nuts. You’d have to be to spend your
whole life following bears around. But I get it, too. When he was with the

---

bears, they didn’t care that he was kind of weird, or that he’d gotten into
trouble for drinking too much and using drugs (which apparently he did a
lot of). They didn’t ask him a bunch of stupid questions about how he felt,
or why he did what he did. They just let him be who he was.
I guess if you think about it, it was kind of a strange movie for them to
let us watch. But I think that a lot of us in here could relate to it. Juliet
started to cry when they talked about how rangers shot the bear that ate the
guy and then cut it open to make sure he was really inside. Personally, I
think they killed the bear because they were afraid of it. That’s what people
do, kill the things they’re afraid of.
Here’s what I think. One, people should figure out that if they go around
bothering bears, chances are they’re going to end up bear snacks. Second,
people suck.
There I go again, jumping from fudge to bears. I swear, sometimes it
feels like there’s this monkey in my head who runs around turning the dials
and changing channels on me. One minute I’m sitting around eating
chocolate chip cookies and then all of a sudden I’m thinking about bears.
Like I said, though, I think a lot of us relate to those bears. We’re in here
because someone—our parents, our doctors, the people who supposedly
love us—are afraid of us. We’re in the Whack-job Zoo so that everyone can
look at us without getting close enough to get hurt. Man, that’s messed up.
I wonder what Cat Poop would do if next time he starts nosing around
in my brain, I just bite him?

---

Day 17
Alert the media: Martha spoke to me today.
I was sitting with her on the couch, reading, and out of nowhere she put
her hand on my wrist and said, “Frex.”
I was so shocked that I stopped reading and just looked at her. She
touched my wrist again. “Frex,” she said, like she was telling me the name
of something.
“Frex,” I said, and she nodded. Then she touched her chest and said it
again.
At first I thought I should call for Cat Poop, but then I decided it might
scare Martha if I got all excited. So I waited, and she rubbed her fingers
along the cuts on one of my wrists. “Frex,” she said. “Frex.”
I didn’t know if she was talking about my wrist, my cut, or nothing in